


Here's A Hand To Lay On Your Open Palm Today

by elegantwings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, tw: agoraphobia, tw: anxiety issues, tw: mental illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-08
Updated: 2012-06-08
Packaged: 2017-11-07 06:43:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/428080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elegantwings/pseuds/elegantwings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It probably wasn’t always like this. There must have been some time when walking into a grocery store didn’t make his palms sweat, answering the phone didn’t make his throat close up. When he tries to remember what being calm feels like, he smells fresh pie and engine grease, but he’s not a kid anymore and it’s just not that simple.</i>
</p>
<p>They don't talk about it, this problem Dean has, or that Sam doesn't have one, or that Cas, when he meets him, has one that's not quite the same. But they make it work anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here's A Hand To Lay On Your Open Palm Today

**Author's Note:**

  * For [keepcalmandrun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/keepcalmandrun/gifts).



> Marina requested Sam and Cas helping an agoraphobic Dean go grocery shopping because there's a self-check out at the store. This is what happened. Marina said it felt like the Decemberists, so I used their song "Of Angels and Angles" for the title. 
> 
> I wrote this from a combination of my own experience and what others have told me about their own experiences. If I unintentionally offended someone, please let me know.

It probably wasn’t always like this. There must have been some time when walking into a grocery store didn’t make his palms sweat, answering the phone didn’t make his throat close up. When he tries to remember what being calm feels like, he smells fresh pie and engine grease, but he’s not a kid anymore and it’s just not that simple. Sometimes, knowing Sam depends on him is enough to get his ass in gear. When Dad has a long week at work, leaving early and staying late, he always leaves money for groceries. Dean used to be able to get away with asking Aunt Ellen or Uncle Bobby for a ride, but since he got his license it just doesn’t make sense not to take himself. But he puts it off, goes really early or really late when the place is almost empty, and never lets Sam come along anymore. Not since the time he was ten bucks short and almost threw up while Sam took out the things they didn’t really need. Sam believed him when he said he just had a headache and couldn’t deal. Sam thinks Dean gets a lot of headaches. Dean thanks god for school lunches and drags Sam to Aunt Ellen’s place for dinner four times a week.

Sam also thinks that he skips school because he doesn’t care. The administration thinks the same thing, and Dean’s gotten more speeches about applying himself than he can count. His brain doesn’t save the bs about how well he could do if he just tried, but it repeats and repeats and repeats that he’s not good enough, he tries to sit through class while his palms sweat and he second guesses his shirt or his hair or what he said to his friends that morning, he tries so hard and he fails. So he gives up, stays home, stays in bed, regrets everything and does it all again for three more days. Then he doesn’t miss a day for a month, and fakes sick for a week to recover. He is sick, and it’s just his luck it’s not the kind of sick his dad can write a note for. Anyway, he’d have to tell his dad, or trust that his dad would believe him.

It’s too much for him to deal with. The dead mom, Dad always running away, Sam trying to act like he doesn’t but still needing Dean. Because Bobby and Ellen are great, but they have their own lives and their own things to deal with, and Dean should be able to take care of everything himself. He’s been forging his dad’s signature since he was ten, cleaning up empty bottles of alcohol and little kid messes and it’s too much and never enough. He looks after Sam. He could make a career out of it. But Sam’s 14 and he doesn’t need Dean anymore, try telling Dad that, and Dean’s adrift. Why can’t he just spend the rest of his life looking after Sam? It’s the one thing he’s good at. He knows because Sam’s not like him, Sam can go to the store and goes with his friends to the mall, has a nearly perfect attendance record and he’s gets straight A’s. And Sam, he probably gets that Dean doesn’t actually get too many headaches. But he never says anything about it.

There are two places in the world where Dean feels like himself: in his bedroom, and under the hood of a car. The second reason is why he could hold a job in Bobby’s auto shop out of anything other than fear of what would happen if he didn’t show up for work. The first means he spends a lot of time at the computer Ash pieced together for him, or occasionally, he reads.

He does have friends, the people who have stuck with him despite the “attitude” that’s landed him more than one detention (more time at school, so he skips, and gets another detention, and skips, and so on). Loners and weird kids, like Ash and Chuck, people who don’t give a shit like Bela and Pam, and Jo who was stuck to his side almost as much as Sam when they were kids and never grew out of it. But he bails on a movie night one too many times, skips a detention with Bela that was mostly his fault in the first place, and he knows they’re upset.

He doesn’t even want to think about dating, the disasters consisting of hook-ups that lead nowhere except a reputation he really doesn’t want. It’s easier not to call. It’s even easier to say he will when she asks, because by then he’s already proven one more time for everyone that he’s good at this one thing and he won’t freak out until later. Later, while he looks at her number scratched out on a piece of paper or the back of his hand, he’ll wonder if she meant it when she asked. He’ll wonder if it’s been too many minutes or not enough, decide to wait until 4:00 but it can’t be 4:00, if it’s exactly 4:00 it looks like he planned it, it’ll have to be 4:03, or maybe 4:14 because it’s further from 4:00. It makes him dizzy, numbers spinning around his head and more questions like, did he put his hands in the right place when he touched her? Did he go too far? Has she told her friends yet? They’re going to look at him when he goes back to school. He crumples the paper, scrubs her number from the back of his hand until his skin is red and sore.

So it makes a lot of sense that he and Castiel crash into each other. Not literally, of course. Dean notices right away that this strange new kid takes care to leave as much space between him and everyone else, too. He’s cute in a strange way, like his eyes and his nose and his mouth should belong to separate people but they work on his face anyway, awkward but he’ll keep growing into it. Dean spends a lot of time looking at him the first few days, the way he disappears staring through the window, wide awake but somewhere else. He’s got this ridiculous handwriting, tilted and feminine, small and filling the pages of his notebook. Dean has a feeling he’s not taking history or math notes. There’s a lot of whispers about the kid, some people think he’s sixteen and other people think he’s twenty, but he’s Gabe Novak’s cousin, so the whispers probably never get too close to Castiel. Nothing gets too close to Castiel, not even his cousin. Which is why Dean’s surprised when Castiel sits next to him one afternoon, close enough that their knees almost brush. It’s October, and it’s comfortably crisp, perfect weather for leftover pie and abusing the senior privilege to eat outside. Castiel’s wearing khaki shorts, a blue and green plaid button-down shirt and green tennis shoes. There’s black wings drawn in sharpie on each heel. He wears these shoes a lot, Dean’s noticed. He’s also noticed how pale his legs are, no hint of a summer tan despite his obvious preference for shorts, the dark hair that covers them. It’s easier to look at his legs than it is to look at his face.

“Hello, Dean,” Cas says, surprising Dean into looking up. They go to the same school, it’s not so weird for him to know his name, but still, it’s strange. Everything about Cas is strange.

“Uh, hey,” he replies, just barely succeeding in repressing the urge to scoot away.

“I would like to come home with you after school,” he states, like he already knows it’s going to happen whether Dean agrees or not, and Dean doesn’t know it yet but he has no chance of ever saying no to Cas, not ever.

Now, though, now his walls come flying up and he does back up, because what the hell they haven’t even really properly met and this guy wants to go to his house, his safety, he can’t, his room, and his life-

Cas rests a hand on Dean’s shoulder, and it shouldn’t be a relief but it is. “Please. I find my home stifling, and I think only you could understand.”

In that way they’re opposites. Dean discovers, as they sit cross-legged on the bed and now their knees touch because it is such a novelty to touch and not want to fly apart, that Castiel is the only child of two eccentric doctors who leave him alone in a huge house for weeks at a time. He used to go to a fancy prep school but he transferred himself to public school, forged his parents’ signature, and no one seemed to notice. He turned seventeen in August, and is therefore a perfectly acceptable age for a senior in high school, and he can’t understand why people think otherwise. His hands shake when he’s stressed, he’s an insomniac, he drinks a lot of coffee and he gets migraines but he’d rather sleep in the nurse’s office than stay at home, in the dark, all alone.

In return for these secrets, Dean shares his safe haven and his brother (which are close to being one and the same), and for some time Dean and Cas don’t leave the house except to go to school. Because in school, Dean breathes easier when Cas is close, because he’s never had someone get it before and he’s never been in love before.

They kiss in private, only touch when they’re alone. They’re not ashamed, but neither wants the attention, content being only a spotlight for each other. Sam and Cas get along so well that Dean doesn’t feel guilty for basically letting his boyfriend move in. They geek out together, and sometimes Dean joins them but when it’s too much he just listens, or goes upstairs, and he doesn’t have to worry that they’re awkward without him. He doesn’t even worry when they stop talking as soon as he walks into the room, he hardly even notices. He relaxes more than he can remember feeling, and he gets lazy. That’s how it all comes crashing in again.

It’s a Saturday morning, a new year, still cold enough that the khaki shorts have been retired for something warmer and they share the soft sweaters in too many colors that Cas got for Christmas. Something’s odd while they eat breakfast, coffee for Cas and waffles for Dean and Sam, and no one’s talking. Dean’s afraid of college talk, worse when John isn’t around because sometimes it’s easier to shout about it, or he’s afraid that something’s wrong with Sam and he’s failed. But really it’s nothing that extreme, and that much worse all the same.

Sam’s the one who brings it up, and Dean will remember to thank him for being the first later. “So, um, we’re running low on food,” he says, pushing waffle around his syrup. “And I was thinking maybe you could drive me to the store later?”

Dean tenses, tries to look like he doesn’t. “Is Cas busy or something?” Is Cas going home today? Why would Cas be going home? Not that it matters. It shouldn’t matter. Dean should be able to handle a day.

“I’m not,” Cas says, looking directly at Dean in that frustrating way that gives Dean no choice but to look back. “We were wondering if you’d like to come with us?”

He feels the panic that’s been at bay rising up and clawing at his insides, but he shoves it down, holding it with every reserve he’s built these past few months. “Three people seems kind of excessive for food shopping, don’t you think?” he says, and there's antagonism in his tone, just under the surface. 

It’s quiet again for almost too long, but long enough that Cas slips his hand into Dean’s and squeezes lightly, startles when Dean squeezes back so tightly because they never talk about this, ever, for any reason, and if he doesn’t anchor himself to something he’s going to fly apart.

Cas’s grip tightens to match Dean’s. “There’s a self check-out now, and it works very well.” Dean’s breathing becomes just that much easier to control.

“What if it doesn’t?” he asks softly.

“We can always get back in the car,” Cas promises, and Dean’s nod is a promise, too, and Sam smiles with relief.

It won’t be easy though, choosing produce and checking prices while people can see his every move, no, not even with Cas’s hand on his back and Sam humming along to the tinny soft rock from the store speakers, but maybe one day it will be.


End file.
